Sunday, June 05, 2005

Yesterday was my grandparents' fiftieth wedding anniversary. Lots of things happened but I shall cut to the part related to the title... After having dressed up in saris and being very oo la la, sis and I were quite tired by two a.m. She went and fell asleep on the floor of my nani's room because it was the coolest(temperaturewise of course) one in the whole house. This was a two feet wide space between the bed and a cupboard. Two of my younger cousins were already asleep on the bed, the one on the nearer side is around 10 years old and the younger one is around five.

I was also rather sleepy, so I went and fit myself in between the little space that blister had left between her and the bed. I looked up to see cousin on bed halfway over the edge and very prone to falling off. I gave him a poke which made him open his eyes and stare at me. The poke was supposed to convey the message 'I'm here! Move on inside or you'll fall off! ' He looked at me and turned away.

I was thinking about how it would be if he had fallen on me. He's quite heavy, just a little under five feet. It would probably kill me. A 35 kg weight falling on you from a height of a foot and a half... wouldn't it just knock the air out of your lungs? I was thinking of the headlines a la Naipaul's Mr. Biswas: AMAZING SCENES WERE WITNESSED WHEN a ten year old boy fell from a bed on his elder cousin sleeping below and killed her instantly...

I fell asleep sometime during the conception of that piece of news .. and what do you know .. THUD! Or should I say THWACK! Amazing scenes were indeed witnessed ... only of a much different kind. Cousin had obviously not understood my poke. My having imagined this situation beforehand made me open my mouth and gutturally go 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA' which had the instantaneous consequence of five people rushing to the room and taking away the poor boy.

Then people leaned over me and asked me if I was all right. I had an instant's urge to cry considering ( I don't know if his face hit mine) but my nose and mouth seemed to hurt a lot. Then I gave some kind of a weak smile because I did find it funny and I was probably relieved at not having died. So here I am, writing this ... and you better not be wanting a newspaper article with the title 'AMAZING SCENES ...' instead of my post!